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The Army Bummer 



AND 



Good Night, 

By Captain JOSEPH G. WATERS. 



KANSAS COMMANDERY 



OF THE 



Military Order of the Loyal LepiixHEOiiited States. 



MAY, 1897. 



The Army Bummer 



AND 



Good Night, 



By Captain JOSEPH G. 



— i):- 



KANSAS COMMANDERY 



OF THE 



Military Order of the Loyal LegionrJnited States. 



MAY, 1897. 



^"': 
M 



^■^ 



APR 1 ^916 



The Army Bummer. 



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The Bummer bore upon his persou the proprietary trade 
mark of the Great United States. He was a creation of the 
American Eagle, and he V)ecame a necessitous necessity as soon as 
his creator was advised of his l)oundIess per capita of utility and 
gall. He never felt the gyves of discipline. If rank compelled 
a salute, a viscious mental exclamation, was Ivmph for such 
lupus. 

No crowned head would have tolerated him for a moment. 
There was about him the potency ari'crYl^'fcTfnjtlwn to knock the un- 
derpining from a throne, or jump:^he claim and sequester the 
crovvn jewels of any satrap who occu])ied that kind of an uphol- 
stered seat. The interest on his capitalized assurance would have 
been ample to have paid the entire principal of the national delit. 
He was a larger book of strategy than De Jomini ever wrote, and 
beyond doubt, he was the only personage, of whom William Te- 
cumseh ever had cause to be envious or afraid. The objective 
point became his while the army was busy in preparation for its 
capture; and it laggardly responded to his request to hurry up 
and help him hold it. 

Had he been a Crusader, the Holy City would have been his 
meat; and his descendents today would have borne the hen lyant 
or the razor back rampant on their ennobled escutcheons. 

If the genus homo of whom I am permitted to speak, could 
have been projected into the Russian campaign, as Mark Twain 
did the Yank into the Court and times of King Arthur, instead of 
Death on horseback pursuing the French army a foot back to 
France, the return from that God forsaken country would have 
been a summer picnic; and, far into the next autumn, the road 



from the Kremlin to Champs Elysee, would have been littered 
with chicken feathers and ham rinds. 

When the government, and the sreat liberty lovinof people 
behind it, were in agony over the outcome, and while the national 
gloom was as though the empty bottles of the night had been up- 
turned and emptied into Chaus, he heard the roosters crow for 
morning and gave the North backbone and faith; when they wait- 
ed in dumb des[)ondency for the dread 8[)hinx to answer, whether 
the government of the people, by the people and for the people, 
should be wiped from the face of the earth, as some day a Kansas 
cyclone will serve the sixteen story buildings of Chicago, he 
punctured the Confederacy and knew it to be an apple of the 
Dead Sea. 

He wired Sherman to come and not b(> afraid as there was 
nothing but a handful of Georgia Malish of odd sizes and last 
year's vintage and thrf^e proclamations of Bragg intervening be- 
tween him and the sea. 

He was a wise man in his day and Army Corps. He always 
hunted up a Baptist settlement for a convenient place to ford a 
river. He was then sure of a ripple and rock bottom. He was 
all things to all women. Notvvithstanding he had a family at 
home, he wooed the southern maiden while a number of loving let- 
ters from his wife remained secure in his pocket. He told her the 
story old as time and sweet as mortalit\-; one, which pulses with 
the same rythm and warmth beneath the midnight sun and Labrador 
sky as it does ami 1 all the opulence of noon's eternal flowers. He 
asseverated to her, that it was under a dire compulsion he dared 
not name, that he took service in the Union army; that scorning 
proffers of hisfh command in both the army and navy, he took the 
humblest position he could find; that althouo^h Grant was his un- 
cle he had not the heart to sanction the General's course; he 
prophesied a victory to the southern cause and hinted at reclama- 
tion from the northern purse for all the south had suffered or 
borne or lost; he declared that upon the conclusion of the vulgar 
and unconstitutional rapine and pillage of the noil-thern horde, he 
intended to return and invest his entire private fortune in that 
very vicinity. 

And then, with his arms enianglino- her, "he poured into the 
porches" of her ears the "leprous distillment" beside which, 



Claude Melnotte's harangue to the tr Ustinov Pauline, was as con- 
tractor's sow belly to Hesperian fruit. And all the while, his 
eyes wandered the landscape ©""er, alert to discover the lair of the 
heirlooms and the abode of the l)uttermilk and sausage. 

He was a statistician who used up the resources of the Coun- 
try in compiling the returns. 

As a financier, he inflated the volume of C'onfederate currency 
by an issue, which, for letter press, was complimentary to the 
Philadelphia concern that got it up, and much of which, our 
British brethren hold and hope some day for the United States to 
assume and pay. 

As the deeps of atmosphere envelope the earth and protect it 
from stellar shot and hot, whizzing, rotten, planetary camp ket- 
tles, so harm comes not to any mortal, as the tenuous nebula 
around the comet's head and hundred miles of tail, so, he sur- 
rounded the army and pervaded the country; a pillar of cloud by 
day and a pillar of tire by night, while the great sinuous, crawl- 
ing Army bisected the Confederacy with a frolic and tore it in 
two with a joke. It was the first great march the Salvation 
Army ever made. 

The bummer's conscience was but an annex to his appetite. 
He was the very inspiration and genius of hunger. Reason, rep- 
utation and risk were hand maidens that waited on stomach. 
Anotomicalh', he was an Octopus of Abdomen, whose tentacles 
reached every hen roost and pig sty. His teeth were sand paper- 
ed and edged for nubbins, pain killer, goose liver, red hair oil and 
corn pone. 

Par excellence, the American Knight; whose lance was al- 
ways in poise for the unwary hog, and who victoriously wrestled 
the ti'ophies, in his jousl and tourney with unsophisticated mut- 
ton. He may have been unshaven, hungry and dirty, but when it 
comes to loyalty to the cause he was a vestal virgin, that had no 
use for a seive; and when it come to disguising his purpose, by 
the use of chin music, he was a Socrates. 

Alas, and ah me ! We gaze backward to at last linger on a 
dream. We invoke the past, and only a specter stalks across the 
memory tonight ! The unreal flesh has taken on the invisible liv- 
ery that mantles a soul in Paradise ! He rides his flea-bitten mule 
no more! His canteen lies corroded and empty! His gastric juice 



iaas taken vacation and he assimilates his victuals no longer! The 
ofreat nerve that touched the brain of an army's intellio^ence and 
activity has departed! 

Where he may he, I cannot tell! Full well 1 know, his valor 
threads the shinino^ meshes of the flag. There is an echo of him 
in the mighty woods as the birds sing songs of peace in the 
depths! Wherever the glow touches the hill tops it tinges his 
name! There is a laughter of streams that ripple to his memory 
and a psalm of oceans that anthems his praise! There was Victo- 
ry and Home again, instead of petty provinces, incongruous, di- 
vergent and soon to be alien! From ocean to its sister sea, is one 
land and one flag, while, under the Divine benignities, he fought 
foi" and so well heli)ed to accomplish! 

Where he may be, 1 cannot tell. If, still, he dance the crazy 
maze called life, I say, God bless him! And, if he is a foot pe- 
destrian on the streets of the New Jerusalem, he has, long ere 
this, ascertained how well the golden cobble stones are anchored 
down and how Arm the matchless gems are set and grounded in its 
alabaster walls! 

W^ith him has vanished the marching men, the horse, the 
rider, the Dahlgreen, "the thunder oi the Captains and the shout- 
ing", the lustrous and shinini>- banners of victory, "the pride, 
pomp and circumstance of glorious war" — all, are gone forever! 



-:o:- 



GOOD NIGHT. 



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The feast has ended and its broken fragments strew the board. 
Sweet as these gathered flowers may be which some kind hand has 
culled, they at last begin to wither and tnrn away in languor from 
their own perfume. For, gray beards all, the hour grows late! 
During the flight of these swift moments, we have heard an in- 
distinct echo of bugles; and where it melts into silence, our ears 
are too dull and heavy to discern. 

There has come to us the patter of far away drums across 
the distance of years and many leagues of time. 

Through a sunburst of the past, ones eyes have cau2:ht the 
glitter of banners, upheld in defeat and advanced high against 
the sky in the supreme agony of victory. There have marched 
by us regiments whose faint footfalls we could not hear; gallop- 
ing artillery, that gave no sound of hoof or wheel; horses, sabres 
and men who sat their saddles well, who answered no salute. We 
have looked and listened as dreamers possessed by dream in the 
dead watch and silence of a mid-summer's night. 

From the other shore of an unknown and mysterious river, 
and across its tide, there has come a murmur of men that the 
witchery of this occasion has mellowed into the low chant of an 
anthem and the swetness of a benediction. 

We have given them faint replies of undying rcganl and one 
answering hail has^ been to comrades. 

May all gracious and all hallowed night, l>ear to them the 
tender and loving words spoken in this cheery place by all this 
goodly company of souls. We have rightfully spoken of the 
cause for which we fought, regardfnlly of each other, and devout- 
ly of the great increasing host, whose lances rust, whose hearts 



arc dust, whose souls are with the lord, we trust! We have given 
the flao' the obeisance the smitten heart yields his lady love. We 
have hid the passing hour with the sweetness of repeated song. 
And now, aweary with the pleasure of this banquet room, the 
desire comes for rest and sleep that only good night brings. 

We have felt the conjury by which dead memories comeback 
to life, we have divined the sorcery of comradeship, and the 
spell of benignant hours is upon us. The longest rivers reach 
the sea, and toast and speech and song end with farewell. It has 
been cast upon me to bo the grim wizard, whose wand shall ruth- 
lessly break this enchantment and by a low and tremouslv spoken 
good night, turn this gay scene into a memory that begins to 
fade, eveu while the painter sits at his easel and brushes its splen- 
dor in. There are a few words in our speech that singly till the 
page and touch the tongue with continued silence. 

Friends, home, family and ofovernment, are more compre- 
hensive than a lexicon and are bounded by no definition. Among 
old comrades, on the eve of seperation, each with the blessing of 
all, some to wander beyond the touch of hand or meet of eye, 
there drifts to human lip, no sadder, sweeter word, which I am 
forced to say, — Good Night! 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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